It makes sense that we are coming up to October soon and with that, we will be talking about what happened almost a year ago. September was the month of “I don’t have time for breakfast in the morning”, even after we would offer him a Pop Tart for the car ride to school. October was now the month of “The Peterson family was withholding me food and they are abusing me and don’t have heat”.
What the reality was though? My stepson was just denying the food. It came to the point; he would eventually not eat at his grandparent’s house.
Because of all the colluding that started, we recorded everything in our household, so at the end of the day, if we had to use it, we would have the evidence that they were lying. However, we at least haven’t had to, but we still have them all in a backup file just in case. It’s one of the reasons we installed the cameras that my stepson didn’t appreciate us having. He probably didn’t appreciate it because having different types of surveillance in our household for protection would show just how much they were lying.
But yes, my stepson was denying the food. What was he more focused on then eating and taking care of himself? Texting his mom. He just stopped liking everything and claimed we only had healthy food in the house. Yes, I will be honest, we do eat on the healthy side as I have been a Type One Diabetic for 19 years and I’m cautious as to what I put in my body. However, I can say that everything in the house for when it came to foods/snacks were everything I had at my own apartment before marrying his dad. And before marrying his dad, his son would come over to my apartment weekly and eat the food with no problem. And even ENJOY it. It seemed once I married his dad though, it became a problem…or did it become a problem for my husband’s ex who didn’t appreciate her son not just loving me as Miss Victoria, but also for loving my food or other things him and I did together?
When church was over, my stepson would eat whatever snacks that the church provided downstairs. What he didn’t realize was I would bring/make some snacks and I guess if he didn’t know it was me who made them, he would eat them. But that wasn’t it, we would get home and he would sit in my husband’s car for a while. And when I say awhile…I mean for an hour or so.
I would make food for my husband’s parents, and they would give some to Ben and he said he loved it and appreciated it. But when I would make it again and he KNEW I made it, he would refuse and just stay up in his room and be on his phone texting his mom while listening to the radio.
Being a type 1 diabetic, I have to record all the meals I make/eat. And when I make the meals, I make them for everyone because up until this point, everyone LOVED meals. I also take pictures of all the meals I make as well as I want to start a restaurant one day in which my stepson has known about for a couple of years since he even helped me create some recipes or create some clever names.
We would receive text messages from my husband’s ex questioning why their son was claiming we didn’t feed him, or check in on him, or offer him food, etc. The list could go on and on as to what she asked. With how she’s been in the past, we knew whatever we wrote, she would try to use against us in court one day. So, Michael and I would wait a bit to craft something up without just sending something without thinking. I’ll give an example with one of the text messages I sent her:
October 27, 2022 at 5:21PM
“Hi. I really hope you’ve been well. It’s Victoria. Michael brought it to my attention that Ben has expressed concern with the food in our house and you have concerns about him not eating. I would like to share that Ben stopped eating breakfast at our place the week school started. He has told me multiple times that he doesn’t have time in the morning. With that, he has Honey Nut Cheerios here (in which he placed on top of our fridge) as well as eggo waffles (which is in our freezer that his grandma bought him). We also have Lactaid milk (which is the same milk he has had while living at his grandparents house all these years as well as milk he has drank at my apartment in the almost 5 years of knowing him and never complained to me or his grandparents). We also don’t and have never had almond milk in our house either. As for lunches and dinners, I make him ham (with sometimes pineapple), rotisserie chicken, regular chicken (he loves my spicy salsa chicken - minus the salsa portion - and he didn’t want it Sunday night). We also make homemade pizza (in which he loves making one half of it while I make the other half), cheesy nachos, cheesy biscuits, and even the Indian dish (which I’ve been making since 2020 and he has loved them all these years). Besides this, I have potato rolls and even Portuguese rolls that my grandpa will get. I also make shrimp, burgers, chicken nuggets, mash potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, pasta, cucumbers, grapes, apple sauce, fruit cups, and even homemade quesadillas. We even reminded him on Sunday that we wanted him to complete his chore of taking out the trash that he has been doing since 9/4/22 on Sundays by 5:30pm so it’s out of the way before dinner but also because the pellet stove I bought was arriving and we wanted to make sure things were out of the way in general. He did not complete his chore nor did he come down for dinner. When we went up later to see what he was doing, he was glued to his computer screen and listening to music. Besides this, he’ll sometimes tell us before going upstairs that he doesn’t want food. So then he doesn’t just miss out on food that he’s been enjoying for almost 5 years of me knowing him and him eating these things even at his grandparent’s house too, but also desserts of his favorite cookies he has us get or even hot chocolate. I double check around 7:30-8pm to see if he wants anything before I put the food in the fridge and he still says he’s not hungry. I already confirmed with his grandparents that the foods I listed are foods that Ben has eaten and eats at their place as well. If the foods I listed are foods that he doesn’t like or doesn’t eat at your place either, then please let me know. But this is just a small list of the foods I make as being a type one diabetic, I have to keep track of the meals.”
Some might say that we helped her create a motion to get full custody, but I was honestly just telling it to her straight of what’s been happening. We do offer him food, he didn’t do his chore that his dad asked him too, and how we double check on him to see if he does want food. I would sometimes triple check in on him and he still wouldn’t want anything. Not just that, but I would keep the food out for a bit before putting it away because I wanted to make sure he would eat. And when it came to the computer that night, we also didn’t try to take him away from the that because he would have immediately texted his mother of “how dare we take away his technology and to reach out to her lawyer to see if something can be done”. We already dealt with the phone issue and not being able to take that away, we didn’t need anything else. I stated that he eats this at his grandparents, and when he came to my apartment. I even mentioned about letting me know if these are the foods he eats while with her and if not, to let me know, but the grandparents too.
After I sent this, I knew I wasn’t going to get a reply back just like Michael doesn’t always get a reply back. Some of these messages even had him attached to it as well in case she claimed she never received it. Sure enough, I didn’t get a response, but she did use the whole “Ben hasn’t been eating breakfast at our place” against us, but forgetting to share the foods we DID offer.
This was just one of many text messages, but it didn’t matter. The colluding was warming up between everyone on that side of the family and her lawyer, that it didn’t matter what we said or did. But we knew we were going to be prepared for when the Marshall would come to our door with papers for my husband. And when my husband would get served with the papers, we would hand over all our evidence to not just my husband’s lawyer, but to make sure that the courts had it too.
As you can see in the text I shared, I mention about receiving a pellet stove that same day. The next blog will be about that and how they claim we didn’t have a safe house and no heat. And this was already after them preparing to claim we weren’t offering my stepson food.
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